Most Loyal
by dust on the wind
Summary: It was twenty-five years ago, but the love and loyalty of one small creature has not been forgotten. Written for the centenary of the Armistice, inspired by Abracadebra's prompt.


_I do not own any of the characters from the series Hogan's Heroes. However, I claim ownership of any original characters appearing in this story._

 _A response to Abracadebra's call to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice and the end of the Great War._

* * *

A soft whirr came from the old carved clock on the wall as a prelude to the hour. The German Shepherd lying on the rug in front of the ceramic stove roused from his sleep and looked around, then, satisfied that all was in order, closed his eyes and resumed his slumber. Old Jacob, who had dozed off in his armchair waiting for his son to come home, barely stirred. Only the smooth-haired terrier cross curled up on his lap stayed awake, her eyes on the door and her ears twitching now and then at the sound of a twig snapping in the fire, or the call of an owl from outside.

A few minutes passed, then the little terrier raised her head, and after listening for a moment she uttered an eager whine, leapt down and raced to the door.

"What...who...Oscar...?" mumbled Jacob.

The dog paid not the slightest attention. She pressed her nose against the gap between the door and the frame, then started scrabbling at the floor as if trying to tunnel through to get to the other side. Failing in this, she danced back and gave voice to a couple of shrill, impatient barks; and as soon as the door opened, she flung herself on the most important person in the world.

"Hush!" said Oscar Schnitzer. "Silly girl! Did you think I wasn't coming home? Don't let this noisy creature bother you, gentlemen. Come in and get warm. Ah – Colonel Hogan, you remember my father?"

"I sure do – no, Mr Schnitzer, don't get up." Colonel Hogan smiled, as Jacob struggled awkwardly to his feet. "Okay, if you insist. It's good to see you looking so fit."

"He has some pain in his hip when the weather turns cold, but he doesn't let it slow him down." Oscar waved towards the long settee standing against the wall. "Please, make yourselves at home. You might as well be comfortable until it is time for your meeting. Can I get you something – a little _Schnapps_ , perhaps?"

"Actually," began Hogan's companion, "I could do with..."

Hogan interrupted, quite smoothly but with emphasis: " _Actually_ , we'd better not. We need to keep our wits about us. Right, Newkirk?"

"Blimey, you'd think a man couldn't hold his drink," muttered Newkirk.

"Holding it's not the problem. It's when you drink it."

"Coffee, then," suggested Oscar. "It's no trouble – Tess, stop it!"

The little dog had left off fawning over Oscar's shoes and gone to satisfy her curiosity by sniffing at Hogan's legs; but when she heard the Englander speak, she stopped dead for a few seconds, staring, then gave a high-pitched yelp, deserted the colonel and lunged towards Newkirk, dancing around his feet and bounding up and down with every sign of pure joy.

Oscar hastened to pick her up. "Please accept my apologies, Newkirk. She has never been so badly behaved towards a visitor."

"That's all right." Newkirk laughed, and petted the dog, and she nuzzled his fingers. "She's just being friendly. Makes a nice change."

"Girls like him," observed Hogan. "I've never figured out why."

"She remembers."

Oscar glanced at his father. "She doesn't know him, Papa."

"She knows an English voice when she hears it," Jacob insisted.

"How could she, when she has only heard German all her life?" Oscar turned back to the visitors. "You must excuse my father. He sometimes gets confused when he is sleepy, and forgets how many years have passed."

"Well, we all do that," replied Hogan. "What did you call her, Schnitzer?"

"Her name is Tess." Oscar put the little dog down.

"Odd name for a German dog."

"There was another Tess, many years ago, the great-great-great…" Oscar paused, apparently counting on his fingers. "...great grandmother of our little one. My father is thinking of the first Tess."

"She remembers," grunted Jacob, tottering back to his armchair.

A spark of interest had kindled in Hogan's eye. "So, the other Tess had a British connection?"

Oscar shrugged. "It was all a long time ago. Shall I fetch the coffee, Colonel?"

"Why not?" said Hogan after a pause. "We've got an hour or so to wait. Thanks, Schnitzer."

Oscar beamed at him, and hurried off to the kitchen; and Tess followed him, glancing back at Newkirk as if reluctant to let him out of her sight, but determined to stay with her very best friend.

As Hogan sat down on the settee, the German Shepherd came over to greet him. "Hey, Bismarck. Good to see you," said Hogan, stroking the broad forehead. Bismarck sighed, a gentle, contented sigh, and laid his head on the colonel's knee.

"He doesn't look too bad, does he?" Newkirk remarked. "Got to admit, I was worried about him. As for LeBeau, he was beside himself. It didn't look good, the last we saw of him."

"Oscar sat up with him for two nights, until he was out of danger," said Jacob.

"Some would say that's above and beyond." Hogan ran his thumb up and down between Bismarck's eyes.

"We were used to it, during the last war," replied Oscar, returning in time to hear this. He had a tray with a coffee set on it, which he placed carefully on the low table in the centre of the room. At his heels pranced the little dog, who trotted over to Newkirk, planted her front paws on the seat beside him, and offered him the stick she held in her mouth.

"You see?" Jacob sent a triumphant look at his son. "She knows."

Newkirk studied the stick with an air of bemusement. It was not quite two feet long, of polished malacca, one end broken off in uneven but time-worn splinters, the other carved into the form of a man's head, long-nosed and comical but beautifully crafted. "Nice bit of handiwork. Been in the wars, though."

"That it has," said Oscar, as he handed Hogan his coffee. "You would be surprised…" He trailed off, and turned away abruptly.

"Let me see, Newkirk." Hogan held out his hand. "A swagger stick, isn't it? Somehow, I don't think it's German."

"No. It belonged to… but that is a very long story."

"Well, we've got some time." Hogan handed the stick back, and gave Bismarck's ear a gentle tug. "You just said something about the last war. It sounds intriguing. You were in the army?"

"The veterinary service. Both of us, my father as well as myself." Oscar had finished handing round the coffee, and took his place in a bentwood chair, across the table from Hogan. "He insisted on joining when I did. We were posted to the same unit, on the Western Front."

Tess was watching with bright eyes as Newkirk twiddled the old stick in his fingers. She snapped at it, but he held it above her reach. "How about that, then? Careful, now, missy, don't make me spill my coffee."

"Tess, _komm her_ ," said Oscar, and she abandoned the game and ran over to jump onto his lap.

"Veterinary service, hey?" Hogan cocked an eye at the younger Schnitzer. "The army still relied on horses back then, for all kinds of work. I guess you were kept pretty busy."

Jacob grunted. "Horses, mules, dogs … Some people thought we had an easy war."

"I wouldn't say that." Hogan looked down at Bismarck, who was now lying across his feet, then cocked an eye at Oscar. "Seems to me you were pretty worked up when this old feller got hurt. I can't imagine how hard it must have been for someone who loves animals, having to deal with battlefield injuries on that kind of scale."

"We had no choice," replied Oscar. "Someone had to do it – treat their illnesses, and patch up their wounds, and…" He finished with a shrug, his brow creasing involuntarily. Tess gave a soft whimper, and nuzzled his chin, and he gave her a reassuring caress.

"It's pretty obvious who she loves the most," said Hogan.

"Yes, she has always been my most devoted little companion. It is surprising to see how she has taken to Newkirk. She does not usually go to strangers with such enthusiasm."

"She remembers," mumbled Jacob again. "The English officer…"

Oscar waved his hand in dismissal. "Twenty-five years ago. If you are trying to say that Newkirk was in France in 1918, serving with an artillery regiment…"

"Hardly. I was just a little nipper, and Mum wouldn't let me cross the High Street on me own," said Newkirk. "My dad was in the army, and his brother as well, but they were plain old Tommies, down in the trenches. We're not generally seen as officer material, us Newkirks."

He eyed the grinning face on the head of the stick. "All the same, if he's the same bloke who carried this cheerful chap around with him, he must have had a sense of humour."

"Yeah, I'd like to know more," added Hogan. "You've got us curious, Schnitzer. What's the story?"

"My father tells it better," said Oscar, glancing at his father. "But as he is almost asleep... So, it was - when was it? Almost the end of the war, but we did not know that. There was a farm, north of Cornay. That was where we had our post."

Jacob had allowed his eyelids to droop, and his head nodded forward. Even so, although he had grown drowsy, the thread of Oscar's voice led his memory back to the old cobbled courtyard, and the grey stone walls of the stable which served both as quarters and surgery…

* * *

The artillery sounded much closer this morning; and the wind, blowing from the south, smelled of smoke and dirt and death.

Jacob had been up all night, tending to the cavalry officer's mare; a duty he could have left to one of the younger men, if any of them had still been there. Not for the first time, he had a few qualms about his decision to remain behind when the order had come for their temporary hospital, staff and patients all together, to evacuate to a safer location.

If the staff veterinarian had been present, he would not have allowed a single man to stay. But _Stabsveterin_ _ä_ _r_ Dr Weser had been called to an urgent briefing a few hours earlier; and his second-in-command was in hospital with pneumonia. The mare, suffering a bout of colic, needed constant attention, and should not be moved, or so Jacob told himself. The truth was, the order had arrived just after young Oscar had set off in the direction of the front to attend to a pair of supply-train horses which had been caught in a mortar attack. Orders were orders, but a son was a son, and Jacob would have died himself rather than leave his boy behind. Taking advantage of the breakdown in command, he had assumed charge, kept two enlisted men to assist with the mare, and sent the rest of the unit to the rear.

Yes, he had qualms, but he wasn't really sorry he'd stayed, even though Oscar had returned only two hours after the convoy's departure, perfectly safe but grumpy and uncommunicative. "Waste of my time," was all he had said.

 _My boy is growing old and sour_ , thought Jacob now, as he stood in the courtyard, smoking his pipe and gazing at the road which ran beyond the boundary of the farmyard, where a column of infantry was passing, heading away from the front.

Oscar came out of the stable, where he had been pretending to sleep. "How close is the fighting?" asked Jacob.

"Getting closer. You should have gone ahead."

"Someone had to stay with the mare."

Oscar gave a cynical grunt, and fell silent, and the father and son watched the end of the column passing by. Then Jacob knocked out his pipe. He was about to go back inside, when a trio of stragglers came into sight. The men slowed their steps, staring at the barn and its occupants; and after a brief consultation, they turned in at the gate and approached. One of them held some kind of bundle, carefully wrapped in an old blanket.

" _Veterin_ _ä_ _rdienst_?" he asked, somewhat nervously.

"Yes," said Jacob.

The men – scarcely more than boys, in fact – glanced at each other. "W-we need your help," faltered the one who had spoken first.

Jacob sighed. "Come this way."

He escorted them into what had been the tack room. Now, with a layer of lime-wash to sanitise the walls, it served as an examination area. Jacob pointed to the table in the middle of the room: "Put it there."

He drew aside the corner of the blanket, and a small black-and-white face appeared.

"Be careful," said the boy. "She bit Hans, and almost took Willi's nose off. We were only trying to help her."

"She's frightened." Oscar, distracted from the previous night's tragedy by this new emergency, studied the little dog with a keen, professional eye. "And she looks neglected. What have you been doing with her?"

"N-nothing, sir," stammered Hans. "We – we found her, just an hour ago."

His friends hastened to add to the tale: "We were coming through the village, and we stopped to – to…"

"To see if we could help a British officer we saw, lying beside the ruins of a cottage. An artillery man, we think – a _Leutnant_."

"He was dead, but this dog was lying beside his body."

"We thought she was dead, too, but as soon as we touched him, she attacked us."

"You see?" Hans held out his hand, roughly bandaged with a handkerchief. "I could get distemper, or rabies, or..."

"I think we have heard enough," said Jacob. Clearly, the boys had been corpse-robbing; he would have been willing to bet the dead man's watch, and pocketbook, and any other personal items they had found on his body, were now in the packs of these three young rogues. At least they'd had the decency to rescue the dog. "Oscar, will you fetch the antiseptic and dress this man's wound? That should be sufficient until his medical officer can look at it. As for this poor little creature…" He turned his attention to the terrier, who cowered, and bared her teeth. She had the anxious look of an animal suffering for want of food, and her paws and belly were crusted with dried mud. "How long had the man been dead?"

"A couple of days, probably," said Willi. "We didn't want to leave her there to die, so we caught her and brought her along. But we can't keep her."

"And what is this?" Jacob pointed towards the wooden stick which had fallen out of the blanket and now lay next to the terrier, and which, under a layer of muck, seemed to have at one end the carved head of a man, with a comically long nose.

"That – that belonged to the officer. The little dog started howling once we'd got her wrapped up safely. Sepp found the stick, and gave it to her, and it seemed to comfort her."

"I see." Jacob could believe it; the little dog had both paws on the stick and seemed prepared to defend it with all her strength. "Well, as my colleague is busy with your friend, you can make yourself useful. Take the enamel bowl from the bench over there, and go and fill it with warm water from the kettle on the stove in the next room."

Willi hesitated. "We should rejoin our company, before we are missed."

"Then you had better fetch the water quickly," replied Jacob.

The dog was wearing a collar, with a little metal tag. She snapped fiercely at Jacob's fingers as he reached for it. "No, it's all right, little one," he murmured, and she shrank back, but allowed him to remove the collar. He wiped the disc with a cloth, and squinted at it. "Her name is Tess."

"Has she been wounded?" asked Oscar, as he finished bandaging Hans's hand.

"Hard to say, she is so dirty. I can't see anything, but we will have to wash her to be sure."

Willi, with Sepp at his heels, returned with the basin of water and put it on the table. "Can we go now?" he said anxiously.

"If you wish."

Awaiting no further dismissal, two of the young men hurried off; but Sepp lingered in the doorway. "You will be good to her?"

"You can leave her safely with us," replied Jacob, a little less sternly, and Sepp, with a last wistful look at the terrier, followed his friends, while Oscar came to help his father.

"She is a pretty little thing," he remarked. Tess cringed, and showed her teeth again.

"Be careful," said Jacob. "Remember, she bit that boy."

"He wasn't badly hurt. She hardly broke the skin." Oscar crouched beside the table, at the little dog's eye level, and spoke very softly, in the best English he could manage. "Hello, little Tess. You're a good girl, aren't you?"

"She doesn't understand your accent," grumbled Jacob. But Tess, gazing warily at this new presence, seemed to become calmer on hearing the familiar language, and submitted, with no more than an occasional unhappy whimper, to being washed and examined.

"No injuries," observed Jacob at last. "But…" He paused, running his fingers across her abdomen. "I believe she might be pregnant."

Oscar clicked his tongue. "What should we do?"

"Why ask? We will be leaving as soon as the mare is ready. Of course, we will take this little one with us." Jacob gave his son a clap on the shoulder. "Before then, she needs feeding, if we have anything to give her."

He left Oscar to deal with this problem, and went to inspect the mare. By the time he returned, Oscar was trying to tempt the little animal with a mush of dog biscuit, softened with reconstituted beef broth. "Please have a little more, Tess," he crooned, as though to a small child. "It's good, no?"

"The men are bringing Bella on to the wagon," said Jacob. "Leave that mess, Oscar, she won't eat it, and I don't blame her. I have one of the dog crates here. She can travel in comfort."

He put the wooden travelling box on the table, and lined it with the blanket, and Oscar tenderly placed Tess inside. She gave a loud, anxious whine, and looked around as though seeking an escape, but Jacob quickly closed and latched the crate.

"We mustn't forget her master's stick." Oscar slipped the last memento of the English lieutenant through the bars of the crate. "It's been broken," he added inconsequentially.

"Which is probably why that set of rascals didn't keep it," muttered Jacob.

The cavalry officer's mare was already loaded onto the big wagon reserved for transporting sick animals, and the men had just finished hitching up the big dray-horse which would pull it. "I'll ride with the mare," said Jacob. "You follow with Tess in the donkey-cart."

He climbed into the wagon with Bella, and nodded to the soldier holding the reins, and they set off; but as they turned northward, he heard a piercing howl of grief rising up from behind him. She knew, he was sure of it; Tess knew she was going away from her English lieutenant, and her faithful little heart was breaking.

* * *

"Only a few weeks later, the war ended."

Oscar fell silent, stroking the little dog, who gazed up at him with sleepy, loving eyes.

"Well?" said Newkirk, after a lengthy pause. "You can't leave it there. What happened to Tess?"

"Oh, once we were allowed, we brought her home. My father kept her until she had her pups. Three of them, all very healthy. She was a good mother," sighed Oscar. "But she was never happy, and she never settled down. And when her pups were old enough to look after themselves… well, she left." He held out his hands in a gesture of bafflement. "We never found out how she got out of the kennel. She waited her chance, and she went."

"She went to find her master," mumbled Jacob, rousing from his doze.

"Is that what you think?" Hogan tilted his head, musing over this new insight into the past of his most valued Underground contact.

"I think she was a most loyal little friend," replied Oscar after a pause, "and I hope she found him, one way or another."

The clock on the wall chimed softly. "One o'clock. We'd better make tracks," said Hogan. "Thanks for the hospitality, Schnitzer. And for the story." He gave Bismarck a final caress and stood up.

Tess, awakened by the activity, leapt from Oscar's lap and trotted over to escort Newkirk to the door, where she stood expectantly, wagging her tail.

"You want to come along, do you?" he asked with a grin. She gave a little excited yap, and pawed at his knee.

"Tess," said Oscar; and once again, the little dog instantly forsook her new friend, and ran to the one who held first place in her heart.

Hogan laughed under his breath. "She knows who she wants to stay with, all right. But don't give up, Newkirk. Sooner or later, you'll find someone who loves you that much. No matter how unlikely it seems."

"Very funny...sir." Newkirk turned up his collar, and with a last glance at Tess, headed off into the night, leaving Hogan to follow. Oscar locked the door, and looked down at his little companion.

"You would go looking for me, just like the first Tess, wouldn't you?" he said. "I hope the English lieutenant was good enough for that. And I hope I am, too."

And his father gave a soft chuckle, as Tess responded with a joyful bark which said, quite clearly, that she had absolutely no doubt of the matter.

* * *

 _Endnote: well, that didn't go where I expected, but that's the way it goes._

 _Oscar's father appeared in "Killer Klink" (Season 2)._


End file.
